Saturday, 25 June 2016

Foxhole Cave

Scrambling,
slipping, sliding, slithering. The entrance to the cave dropped us past a last
green of moss, of fern, and into mud and darkness. A crowded huddle of a living
space, but this is where it seems people lived, here in these first few yards
where daylight could still slide in, like us, through the cave’s narrow mouth.
A packed-earth floor, clay filling the foot-trapping spaces between boulders, a
campfire’s charcoal found here and only here in all the long twisted digestive
system of the cave. Deeper in, and would that fire-warmth and fire-light become
a quiet smothering death? So here, here they lived and died, or maybe here they
slept? And living and working and being together happened out there, where the
dale dropped in deep folds below High Wheeldon, where the sky stretched into
wide horizons, where the world spread its life before the watchers on the
hillside.

We slid
further in, clambering, the caves lubricating us generously with a saliva of
pale sandy-coloured clay that I still find in the treads of shoes and the folds
of coats. Deeper, darker, swallowed. And thrilled. The clay floor reveals
itself in handfuls of the finest bones. The accumulated residue of centuries of
fox droppings. Mice, voles and water voles, their incisors like over-eager
chisels, far too long for such small animals. Digestion pauses. Torches off.
Crouch on a boulder and listen to the silence. Perch on a boulder and feel the
darkness. Water seeping through the limestone to drip. Each drip only magnifies
the absence of other sound. A candle breaks the darkness. This is the real
cave, this cold world touched by a glimmering light, this enchantment. This is
Foxhole Cave.

That
alimentary canal splits, a side-stomach. A bear cave. A bear butchered here. It
had to have been here first, who would have – could have – dragged it down here
to dismember it? Hibernating? Was it caught and speared? These are bear caves,
the homes of cave bears. Their skulls and our skulls resting together in the
darkness. What bound us, bear to human? Anything beyond a pendulum swing of
predator and prey? That cave enchantment? That’s what I want – the rumbling power
of a bear totem in the depths of the cave. The song of Grandmother Bear in the
clapping of hands, the stamping of feet, voices singing under the glittering
night-sky, by the cave-fire, here in the deepest darkness.

But I don’t
know. We don’t know. The story speaks to me, lures me into words and poems and the
endless enchantment of skull and stone, but the evidence lies in bones in
boxes, lies buried under the accumulated debris of a dark cave, lies in the
tiny shard of chertz discarded on the cave floor.

The
afternoon reclaims us with sunlight and grass and unconcerned sheep and the
cave’s mouth closes quietly and firmly around its darkness and its secrets. We
are covered with cheerful, triumphant clay and I am full of stories.

2. A thousand thanks to
Paul Mortimer of the National Trust for letting us muscle-in on his reconnoitre of
the cave for later public visits.

3. This wasn’t
really a Collections activity but the event will feed into the work of both
Richard Johnson and myself in Buxton Museum's Collections in the Landscape project. This project is expanding public access to the
Museum’s Collections both in the museum by redeveloping the Wonders of the Peak
Gallery and through school and public activities and enabling access to the
Collections through virtual resources

4. Cave Bear: no, the skull in that photo was not awaiting us in Foxhole Cave. You can go and visit it at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

Thanks

Once again
to Paul Mortimer for bearing with a group of over-excited artists and educators
with grace and charm